#into his framework

[straightlightyagami]

people who don’t know much about a subject and have trouble expressing themselves but have a level of open-mindedness and curiosity about the world and the bare minimum of critical thinking skills are infinitely better to talk to than someone who learned a bunch of big words and can say stupid things eloquently but has dogshit reasoning ability and absolutely no interest in listening to anyone else

[purgetrooperfox]

tired: fox has never done anything wrong in his life he was under control of the chip he didn't mean to kill fives he would never do that

wired: fox was being deliberately, continuously manipulated by palpatine into doing anything he wanted under threat of severe bodily harm, no chip necessary

inspired: fox is a product of brainwashing and genuinely believes in the senate and the republic, which is in constant conflict with the rhetoric he hears from politicians and his general dislike of senators, but that conflict is ultimately irrelevant. he believes in the institution with his entire self. he was born to die for this system and would lose his shit if he started questioning it in any meaningful way. The Institution told him to kill fives so he killed fives, it told him to hunt down ahsoka so he did it, etc etc. conviction that this is all worth it because the republic Can Only Be Right (or else his entire existence and everything the guard puts up with are meaningless) is what gets his ass out of bed in the morning. he'll do terrible things to protect it, and by extension his sense of self, and he won't apologize for it because it's categorically Right in his brain. none of this changes the fact that he's routinely abused by this system, or the fact that he's enslaved by it, or that he has no real choice in anything, only how he personally reconciles it all

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[egophiliac]

Where can you play ride kamens? It looks fun looking at your blog but idk where to play

it'll doesn't start until the 30th, but there's some pre-release episodes/character bits that are scattered around the website and twitter! (the links to pre-reg/download are also on the website :D)

honestly I'm really enjoying it just based off of the pre-release stuff, these characters look like they're going to be exactly that blend of ridiculous and emotionally constipated that hits me so right.

[chickenoptyrx]

Did more animal picture redraws ¯\_( '-' )_/¯

[sunderwight]

Nie Huaisang pulling a Jaskier where somehow everyone thinks he's physically tiny, because of how he tailors his clothes and the way he moves and acts and refers to himself, but in actuality he's almost the same height and shoulder width as Nie Mingjue and the impression of him as "just a little guy" is a carefully crafted illusion that would shatter if the main cast all lined up naked together.

[space-mouse]

seeing people consider their own critical thinking skills in response to Plagiarism and You(tube), i'd like to share the SOAPSTone analysis framework i learned in AP lang & comp.

Speaker: who is this person? what are their credentials? any obvious motivations, personal or financial?

Occasion: when did the speaker say/write this thing? yesterday? a decade ago? was it for a specific event, or perhaps part of a larger series?

Audience: who did the speaker expect their message to reach? a certain age group? a specific fanbase? people with certain political opinions?

Purpose: why did the speaker say/write what they did on this occasion? what did they want the audience to think or do in response to their message?

Subject: what is the speaker talking about? is there a reason to take them seriously on this topic? why did they bring it up on this occasion?

Tone: how did the speaker choose to address their target audience? as a friend? a supplicant? an authority? why did the speaker choose this tone?

[canisalbus]

When did Machete realize he was gay? Was it only when he met Vasco, or was it earlier and he just repressed it?

If you asked him, he might admit that in retrospect he must've had a vague inkling earlier (thinking of all the times he let his gaze linger on a painting of some handsome nobleman a little longer. Which almost makes it like... a 16th century equivalent of having a secret fictional crush). But I think it probably would've been more of a detached, aesthetic attraction than anything he recognized as distinctly gay, bad and worth of repressing. It's not a sin to quietly appreciate art and the beauty of the human form.

I'd say Vasco, his best friend at the time, was most likely the first real person he had actual feelings for. The realization was so distressing he stayed in denial about the whole thing for a good while.

[shrimpchipsss]

professor shen qingqiu, the most confusing man in academia

(redraw of that indiana jones scene)

[valtsv]

i gotta talk about my low empathy james fitzjames headcanon actually. i prommy i don't use it to excuse any of the acts of violence he committed against his fellow man (not just the colonialism either, but things like the petty rivalry with crozier that borders on bullying prior to the death of franklin) because as a low empathy person i know that's not how it works. but i do think that viewing his actions through a lens of understanding that both circumstances such as his birth and being a part of the british empire as well several choices he's made in life (particularly his sycophantic attitude towards those in positions of greater authority whose favour can work in his and his participation in active combat) have led him to become broadly alienated from other people and both their and his own emotions makes them more interesting.

[zukosdualdao]

i will never understand when people act like zutara shippers are reaching when we say the crystal catacombs scene is intensely romantically coded because like... ignoring literally all other context (which does have other hallmarks of romantic coding, but literally pretend you don't know anything about the show or scene for a second)... what would you think happened in this picture?

would it .... would it maybe be an interrupted almost-kiss

[spocks-kaathyra]

r u even a nerd unless ur putting clips of ur favorite character through a phonetic analysis program and swooning over their plosives

[ofbreathandflame-archive]

(heavy discussions on sa - this is actually an older post that i made like months ago, and was actually the first draft of the amarantha taboo post, so some things sound similar! just a heads up!)

you know i actually think there is a wider discussion to be had about rhysand's sexual assault - or sexual assault and trauma as it functions in the wider narrative. ive always felt that bc the story puts rhysand in this vulnerable position (i.e. a victim of sexual violence) the story always needs to like...make up for it, if that makes sense? 

what i mean is: the story creates this dynamic where rhysand is a victim; he has no power, control, or say - but it also has a very hard time reconciling to the fact that he was placed in this position. and so there's these weird placeholding pieces of information that often addle or confuse the narrative. and i talked about this before with rhysand's framing of his 'service to amarantha.' i also contributes to the moments of hyperviolence with rhys in the books, as if he constantly has to make up for the fact he was placed into these vulnerable positions in the first, implicitly.

the first book - and other books thereafter - imply that rhysand's court is specificially shielded from amarantha because he aligns himself (action word). rhysand's decision is framed as a 'sacrifice' which implies a choice (that he didn't really have). it always implies that rhysand is the one consciously 'one-upping' amarantha by 'agreeing' to be her 'right hand man' again - notice how despite the fact amarantha is characterized as a sexual deviant, she's rarely the focus. its what rhys 'gave' and not what 'amarantha did.'  

and this is fine if this is the way rhysand chooses to see what happened to him - bc then that's a trauma response. he can't acknowledge it so its better for him to rationalize it - that would have been great writing. 

but thats not how his sexual assault and role utm is discussed. 

other characters view rhys sexual assault as a statement of heroism (which ew) and not a just a statement of amarantha's capacity for sexual violence. tarquin literally says something along those lines. which again is implying that RHYS HAD A CHOICE. we can't frame this as heroism. he was raped, he did not sacrifice something...it was taken. 

in the initial scenario - where we remove the idea of autonomy (e.g. the idea that rhys purposely aligns himself with amarantha) he's a victim. but then - so is tamlin, tarquin, beron, kallias, and helion. in short - rhys being taken advantage of says nothing about him. it's a statement on amarantha's cruelty. but the story isn't satisfied with this bc...how would he be any different than tamlin whose vilified for being directly affected by his trauma, who 'sat on his ass for fifty years' as the book says. 

its the tragedy of how male sexual assault is rationalized in this series. the story literally purposely sets up a mirror position where rhys and tamlin are consistently compared for how they work through some of the craziest trauma ever known to man. the level of trauma the story is asking these characters to 'overcome' is actually quite insane. 

so the story ups the ante, it doesn't want rhys to be 'just a victim,' it wants him to be the MAN TM. bc tamlin and tarquin are 'just victims' so ewww. like even lucien is given another horribly written experience with sexual assault (which it literally has to bend the worldbuilding to accomplish) and then kind of position his complaints abt ianthe as whiny. or how tarquin's trauma is...not 'dark' enough for feyre. these men are often characterized as cowardly or not enough in relation to rhys. helion, thesan, tarquin, and tamlin are all consistently characterized as 'cowards' with little to no initiative or backbone.

so the story does that thing where it provides impossible situations: rhysand is the most powerful being in the world, he's so powerful that even without his 'real' power, he's still light years more powerful than the others when they're powers are ripped away. he can read minds, and has two wraiths that can literally walk through the walls and spy. he's often sent on missions on behalf of amarantha and can waltz in and out of the spring court without any issues (ie. its easy for him to convince amarantha he needs to go to the spring court multiple times. and then when he works for amarantha - he's the mastermind, not her. he's playing her all along and blah blah blah). but then it doesn't know how to write this dynamic with rhys and amarantha. and then it depowers him, while shaming the other men in the series for not doing 'enough' even when the most op character with all of those advantages isn't even able to over power her.

there's little introspection into amarantha as a character and as a villain -- and you'll notice she's hardly ever mentioned after the first book...despite the fact that she was literally the high queen of prythian and was the governing oppressive force for a half-century. as said in this post - the story isn't actually concerned about making a point about male sexual asault.

and that's why i talked about why that amarantha taboo is...kind of important to how the story chooses to conceptualize sexual violence/assault. the choice to create amarantha (and ianthe and maeve too) as these caricatures of sexuality - which is pretty much the case of all of sjm's villains. 

the story doesn't want to fully commit to a tactical scenario, because it doesn't believe that he's a victim in that capacity  - or at least that the victimhood is valid. bc its spends so much time invalidating the male trauma around rhys, the only way to make a distinction between rhys and the others to have rhys "orchestrate" his own assault to save everyone.

[qiu-yan]

i'll write a more in-depth post later, but imo one of the reasons for the level of disagreement in this fandom is that many of us readers can see what mxtx is trying to imply about ethics through her work and simply do not agree with her base premise. like i think that there are some conclusions about the various characters in mdzs that mxtx wants you as the reader to draw. you can kind of tell even if you don't agree with those conclusions. more importantly, though, you can also tell exactly what kind of moral philosophy mxtx (consciously or unconsciously) favors, and what she treats as the granularity of morality, so to speak. the most commonly-held positions in the fandom are those mxtx intends for the reader to reach using her own beliefs about ethics as fundamental axioms.

the problem, then, is when the reader does not agree with mxtx's unspoken axioms of morality. if you come into mdzs with a moral framework different enough from what mxtx has (consciously or unconsciously) used to write mdzs, then of course you're going to come to different conclusions regarding the characters or even the object lessons of the story.

or rather, in simpler terms: the rammies, mxtx....the rammies....

[purgetrooperfox]

not to foxpost on the foxblog but I think we should all talk more about the cognitive dissonance that the GAR, and the Guard specifically, would have to deal with on an ongoing basis. they're brought up and had it drilled into them for a decade straight that the Republic is worth fighting and dying for, that it stands for justice and freedom and [insert patriotic buzzwords here]. they get deployed directly into a slaughter on Geonosis. they get assigned to Jedi who intentionally get them killed. they get assigned to the Guard and listen to Senators treat the war like an abstract, distant concept and the clones like equipment to be manufactured/replaced/disposed of. they're treated as subhuman by civilians. they're slaves in this system that was built up to be a shining star, a perfect example of democracy, the thing they're born to die for.

so what do you get. indoctrinated beliefs versus lived experience. sure, some of them turn (Slick) or desert (Cut), but most of them have to reconcile that conflict without walking away from the army altogether. Dogma is one end of the spectrum, going the route of "my indoctrinated beliefs must be true, so I'll selectively validate parts of my lived experience to align with them and seek out proof of them". Fives is, on Umbara at least, the opposite end, going the route of "my lived experience must be true, so I'll recontextualize my indoctrinated beliefs to match it". the Republic is still worth everything, but maybe we can't trust the Jedi, or the Kaminoans, or the Chancellor.

but the majority of them are going to fall closer to Dogma, otherwise the GAR would stop functioning or try to collectively rebel, right? it's easy to skirt around how deep brainwashing runs and how far people will go to resolve dissonance, but fmngmfng

so you take Fox in the context of Commander of the Guard, and you get "the Republic must still be worth it, so these rules and regs are in place for a reason, and even if they're not then they do work to protect us, and the Senate is doing its best with a bad situation, and the Chancellor wouldn't commit xyz atrocity because he is the Republic" and on and on and on to try to reconcile it all in his poor fucked up brain. how would he carry on with the slog of his job? how could he possibly have the space to wrestle with the contradiction? then the longer you lean into one justification, the deeper it sinks in and reinforces itself

anyway this has been needless over-analysis hour

[code-dy]

Y'know what

Han Yoojin as a scam baiting vlogger, Sung Hyunjae as the managing director of a well-known Cybersecurity firm and Song Taewon as the overworked+underpaid head of the cybercrimes division of the Korea Central Intelligence Agency

[ckret2]

getting all up in my head with thoughts about what would happen if bill tried to tell the story of him 'liberating' his dimension, but in person. I have no idea what scenario would prompt him to do this, but he did it in the book of bill, and he references having done it before, so I guess it's possible to get him to talk about it. I can just imagine that he'd just completely black out again while telling the story and not even be able to hear it if people tell him he can stop. Like full on dissociation unable to stop talking or even remember what he said. I wonder how that would look from an outsider's perspective. Probably deeply concerning. Sorry that you're being subjected to my thoughts about this now lmao, the price one must pay for writing an excellent story.

I have plans for him to retell the story in the fic. I've got the scenario planned.

I'm going to load up the page in procreate, type a full monologue on top of it, and tweak it until the few words we can see on the page line up with the same words in the monologue. It's gonna be fun.